How I Built a Third Place Platform Using Lessons From Gardening

 

By Arec Ligon

Third places are ecosystems like my wildflower garden. They are notoriously difficult to engineer from the top down. They are best cultivated cooperatively on good land to suit the resources and needs of the locale.

My wildflower garden is my pride and joy. It’s not always beautiful, especially in the winter and early spring. But even when it’s cold and the flowers have fallen, it's the most alive part of my yard. I leave the dried stalks so that beneficial insects hibernate and lay eggs in them. In the spring, the pollinators come for the blooms. As it gains some height, dragonflies show up to hunt mosquitoes from their perches.

The mix of flowers changes a lot year to year and season to season. I’m not forcing it to look a particular way; the garden grows from what the garden provides. I just made space for the ecosystem to develop.

I am building something that runs on the same principles, except instead of pollinators and dragonflies, it's communities. My startup, Linger, is a platform for finding and supporting third places (if you’re new to the term, read up here). Sharing Linger and my story with others has sparked lively conversations about how important places are and how people are working to strengthen communities. Through those conversations, I've anchored on the idea that third places are ecosystems like my wildflower garden. They are notoriously difficult to engineer from the top down. They are best cultivated cooperatively on good land to suit the resources and needs of the locale.

I Miss My Third Place.

Before we had children, my wife and I lived close to Main Street in Fortville, Indiana. Every Thursday, we would go over to the bar for trivia night. We gradually became regulars, and I’d say that's the only time in my life I've had a real third place. We didn't know how lucky we were to have that feeling in a town of just 4,000 people.

Now I live in Brownsburg (pop. 34,000), and I've spent a genuinely embarrassing amount of time searching for live music nearby. What’s worse, the closest place worth hanging out in at all is a mile away and across a US Highway. Not far, but enough of a trip that "let's just walk over" turns into “let's make plans,” and making plans is where spontaneous third place culture goes to die.

What I’m feeling in Brownsburg is shared across thousands of single-family, residential-zoned neighborhoods. Good third places exist, but there are huge coverage gaps, and most of us have no reliable way to find the ones that fit us. Americans are moving more often. The loneliness epidemic succinctly describes the atrophy of our community-building muscles. Polarization keeps us wary of “the other.” So, we default to what's easy: staying in, ordering delivery, scrolling, streaming, sending an evening's worth of entertainment budget to Silicon Valley and Hollywood.

Choosing Good Ground.

The difference between a half-mile walk and a mile-long errand is the difference between a habit and a hassle.

The most vibrant third places are close enough that visiting doesn't require a plan. That's the whole lesson of Fortville versus Brownsburg; the difference between a half-mile walk and a mile-long errand is the difference between a habit and a hassle. As Linger’s map fills in, it’s easy to see the gaps where third places are needed.

The key differentiator from other search tools is how much niche information Linger gathers about third places. The unique “third-placey” characteristics are the most important part of the site. Over time, Linger will have data-driven geographic patterns that I can surface to planners, business owners, and the people who benefit from the places. Those patterns will answer questions like, “What unique third-placey qualities are present in this area?” and “What are people searching for that they don’t have nearby?” Translating back to garden-speak, “What kind of garden can I encourage in this particular combination of soil, sun, water, and temperature?”

Community-Driven Tending.

Now in its third year, my garden takes great care of itself. But gardeners know that any plant is considered a “weed” if it’s growing in an undesirable location. The most common offenders in my garden are actually trees: mulberries and maples. So, every few weeks, I walk through and do some manual pulling and pruning.

I have not, and will not, write an automation script to seed Linger with 10,000 third places overnight. The deep, high-quality data that Linger needs to serve its mission can only be provided by the people who know the places best. Any user with a free account can add a place in about three minutes and then the community can keep the information up to date. Linger has maintenance tools to help users make edits while baking in trust and corroboration mechanisms to keep things high quality.

We don’t do star ratings or rankings that “yuck someone else's yum.” Third places are a matter of taste, and the goal isn't to crown the “best.” Linger helps people find their kind of third-placey spots, and it surfaces genuinely good places because the community tends them, not because they bought a better ranking.

The Tipping Point Toward a Self-Sustaining Ecosystem.

It’s a lot of work to get a new garden started, especially if it’s replacing a lawn full of herbicides and insecticides. You have to encourage native plants to re-seed themselves and new bugs to build their populations. The cities that thrive are the ones that get newcomers out, exploring, spending time and money locally. Every additional person in a place adds to its character, especially when it’s demographically diverse. The vibrancy and activity become their own kind of draw to a place and that’s when it tips toward self-sustaining.

Part-Time Gardeners Wanted.

I have a lot of hope for what Linger could grow into. I hope you’ll give the site a try. I hope you add your favorite third place. Then, get off your device and get out into the world. Linger won’t try to keep you hooked so it can sell ad space and paid placement (and we never will). Instead, I hope you come back every now and again to do a little pruning and pulling for your community’s third places.

Arec Ligon is the Founder of Linger, a community discovery platform that connects people to third places and teaches them how to be good villagers. He lives in Brownsburg, Indiana where he builds Legos with his 4-year-old son and fixes things around the house with his 6-year-old daughter. Most of all, Arec loves working in the yard to grow beautiful flowers and vegetables for his amazing wife. You can follow Linger on social media at @LingerHQ.